"Now for the other!"
* * * * *
Thenceforward, no one saw Kitty and no one danced with her. She spent
her time in beflowered corners, or remote drawing-rooms, with Geoffrey
Cliffe. Ashe heard her voice in the distance once or twice, answering a
voice he detested; he looked into the supper-room with a lady on his
arm, and across it he saw Kitty, with her white elbow on the table and
her hand propping a face that was turned--half mocking and yet wholly
absorbed--to Cliffe. He saw her flitting across vistas or disappearing
through far doorways, but always with that sinister figure in
attendance.
His mind was divided between a secret fury--roused in him by the pride
of a man of high birth and position, who has always had the world at
command, and now sees an impertinence offered him which he does not know
how to punish--and a mood of irony. Cliffe's persecution of Kitty was a
piece of confounded bad manners. But to look at it with the round,
hypocritical eyes some of these people were bringing to bear on it was
really too much! Let them look to their own affairs--they needed it.
At last the party broke up.
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